FIFA World Cup 2026 Schedule — Fixtures, Dates & Kick-Off Times

Every one of the 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup 2026 is listed on this page: dates, kick-off times, venues and stage-by-stage structure, from the opening night at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City to the final at MetLife Stadium in New York/New Jersey. Fixtures update live as group positions settle and the knockout bracket fills in.

World Cup 2026 Key Dates: From Opening Match to the Final

The 2026 tournament is the longest World Cup ever staged, running for 39 days and packing in forty more matches than any previous edition. Understanding its rhythm — when stages begin, when rest days fall, when simultaneous kick-offs arrive — is the first step to following it well, whether as a fan planning viewing or a bettor planning a staking calendar. The group stage opens on 11 June and delivers football nearly every day for over two weeks, with up to six matches on the busiest days. The knockout rounds then compress 31 elimination games into three weeks of escalating stakes. Here are the key dates that frame the entire tournament:

Mark the transition days especially — 27 and 28 June, when the group stage ends and the Round of 32 begins with barely a pause, is the most information-dense weekend of the entire football summer.

Group Stage Fixtures Across 16 Host Cities

The group stage is a continental road show: 72 matches distributed across sixteen cities in three countries, with each of the twelve groups touring multiple venues rather than settling in one region. The tournament kicks off on 11 June in Mexico City, where the Estadio Azteca becomes the first stadium ever to host matches at three World Cups, with Guadalajara and Monterrey completing the Mexican slate. Canada contributes Toronto and Vancouver, while the eleven American host cities stretch from Seattle and San Francisco on the Pacific to Boston, Philadelphia and New York/New Jersey on the Atlantic, by way of Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City and Miami. Our fixture list lets you filter this sprawl in the ways that actually matter: by group, to follow one team’s complete path; by city, if you are attending matches; and by date, for planning a viewing or betting day. Each fixture entry shows the stadium, local kick-off time and the teams’ current group position, linking directly to our standings and predictions for that match.

Time Zones: Watching Matches From Anywhere

A three-nation World Cup spanning four time zones means kick-off times demand real attention, particularly for the global audience following from Europe, Asia or Australia. Matches are staged across the following zones, and a single matchday can touch all of them:

• Eastern Time (ET) — New York/New Jersey, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto;
• Central Time (CT) — Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey;
• Mountain Time (MT) — occasional scheduling overlap for central venues;
• Pacific Time (PT) — Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver.

For viewers in Australia, the practical consequence is that most matches fall in the morning and early afternoon AEST, with marquee evening kick-offs in the US landing around mid-morning the next day Sydney time. Our schedule displays every kick-off in local venue time with an easy conversion, so you will never be caught out by a Round of 32 tie starting four hours earlier than expected.

Knockout Bracket: Round of 32 to the Final at MetLife Stadium

From 28 June the tournament becomes single elimination, and the schedule turns into a bracket — thirty-one matches deciding everything, with extra time and penalties resolving any game level after ninety minutes. The new Round of 32 is the great unknown of this World Cup: sixteen ties in six days, pairing group winners against best third-placed qualifiers in matchups the old format never produced. The bracket is fixed in advance, meaning every team’s potential path to the final can be traced the moment group positions are confirmed — and those paths are far from equal. One half of the draw can stack three former champions while the other opens a corridor for a dark horse, a structural fact that shapes both team strategy in final group games and the value in outright markets. Our schedule page renders the full bracket visually as it populates, showing each round’s dates and venues through the semi-finals in Dallas and Atlanta and onward to the final on 19 July at MetLife Stadium, where over 82,000 spectators will watch the trophy decided.

Rest Days and Fixture Congestion — a Bettor’s Angle

Recovery time is one of the quietest but most reliable edges in tournament betting, and the 2026 schedule distributes it unevenly. Teams playing the late fixtures of the group stage’s final round can face a Round of 32 tie on short rest, while opponents from earlier-finishing groups enjoy an extra day or two of recovery — a meaningful difference in the fourth match in a fortnight, played in midsummer heat. The pattern repeats deeper into the bracket, where semi-finalists from the second match slot reach the final with one day less recovery than their opponents. Travel compounds the effect: a quarter-finalist hopping from Miami to Kansas City absorbs more fatigue than one staying on the same coast. Our schedule annotates rest-day differentials for every knockout tie, because when two evenly matched teams meet in July, freshness frequently decides what tactics cannot.

How to Plan Your Betting Around the Schedule

Treated passively, the schedule is a calendar; treated actively, it is a planning tool that imposes discipline on a five-week tournament. The structure of the group stage rewards patience: matchday one offers the least information and the most pricing errors based on reputation, matchday two reveals true form, and matchday three is governed by qualification mathematics more than quality — three phases demanding three different betting approaches. Sensible bankroll planning follows the same calendar logic, spreading your tournament budget across all 39 days rather than exhausting it in an exuberant opening week, and reserving capacity for the knockout rounds where analysis has the most data to work with. The schedule also tells you when to be selective: on six-match days, choosing the two fixtures you understand best beats spraying stakes across all of them. Pair this page with our predictions before every matchday, and the calendar stops being a list of dates and becomes the backbone of a genuinely organised World Cup strategy.